


Thicker Than Water

by misura



Category: Priest (2011)
Genre: Community: smallfandomfest, M/M, Post-Canon, Pre-Slash, Vampires
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-05
Updated: 2012-07-05
Packaged: 2017-11-12 00:12:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,015
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/484470
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/misura/pseuds/misura
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The alternative to letting go.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Thicker Than Water

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Silent_So_Long](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Silent_So_Long/gifts).



> prompt: _Black Hat/Priest, the devil in the darkness_ (metallikirk)
> 
> never posted to the com, since I missed the deadline for claiming the prompt

The hat still feels warm when he picks it up, and he almost drops it there and then, let it lie where it's touched ground. He has no use for it, after all - it's just memories and ashes.

He takes it anyway, ignoring the way Hicks looks at him - Hicks doesn't _know_. Will never know. Some things, a man deserves to be allowed to keep to himself.

"Don't." _She_ knows, of course.

He stuffs the hat into his bag. It's an ill fit, but not an impossible one. "Just a reminder." As if he needs one.

Still, after all this, perhaps the dream will stay away. He's got so many other things to dream about now, after all, and Sola Mira feels like a lifetime ago.

 

"He's dead, right?" Lucy asks, and if anyone deserves the truth, surely it's her. The daughter of his body, even if Owen will always be her father.

"Yes," he tells her.

He stays just long enough to make sure she and Hicks get the wedding they deserve (it's important, these things, even in wartime - especially in wartime). Owen gives her away, and Hicks accepts her, and his oldest friend presents her with a knife for a wedding gift she will hopefully never be required to use. He feels old, watching the celebration after; old and out of place.

 

The fact that he doesn't wake up until Black Hat starts talking is hopefully a sign that he hasn't woken up at all, that this is just another dream. Better than Sola Mira, perhaps, but not by much.

"You ever heard the saying 'if you can't beat them, join them'?"

The word he's looking for, he thinks, is _genocide_. (He remembers Owen, sitting up in bed, bandages all over him, whispering _kill 'em all_.) The Church does not approve of it but then it did not seem to approve of _him_ , either, last time he was in the Cities.

"Is that what you did?" he asks. The hat was in his bag. The bag was to his left. Close.

He'd never expected to die in bed, or in his sleep, but it seems the possibility is not as far off as he had thought, assuming this is real. (He remembers Black Hat, talking about the Queen who infected him without turning him into a Familiar, _my Angel of Mercy_.)

Black Hat chuckles and spins his hat before he puts it back on his head. "No."

 

The hat is still gone in the morning.

It's entirely possible it slipped out of his bag at some point, unnoticed, another object lost to the desolation. These things happen; it's why he carries spares of nearly everything, and extra food.

He's hardly expecting company.

 

"Maybe I'm haunting you," Black Hat says.

The fire hasn't completely died yet.

"No." The Church is quite clear on what happens to the dead, be they man or otherwise. Vampires, lacking a soul, simply cease to be - man, owing his existence to God, finds eternal solace.

"No," Black Hat agrees.

"You survived the blast. Your army didn't."

Black Hat seems to be making himself comfortable. His eyes flash yellow when they catch the light but other than that, nothing suggests he might be anything other than human.

"Well, it happens."

Too easy. Too ... calm. "Where's the Queen?"

"Don't go and ruin the moment, Priest."

Perhaps it's another way of saying _I don't know_. (Perhaps it's another way of saying _I don't care_ , although that seems unlikely.)

 

The Wastelands are all around him, offering little cover and less places to hide.

He wonders if he is losing his mind, if such a thing is possible for those like him, and whether or not he should hope that is what's happening here, considering the alternative.

 

He wakes to a soft trembling, the kind that signifies people - or ferals. Vampires.

"Sounds like dinner," Black Hat says, baring teeth. Baring _fangs_.

People, then. "I can take them." No matter their number or their weapons; they will be underfed and ill-trained, if at all. They might be innocents, even, simply lost on their way to ... somewhere else.

"So?"

It might be good, to get a reminder. And the vampires in the resevations were permitted to feed - if never on humans. Officially. "No."

"Pretty please?" Black Hat is grinning at him, mocking him. Daring him.

Making him remember the man he used to be, the men _they_ used to be.

"Do you need it?" Too blunt, perhaps.

Black Hat licks his lips. "No."

A vampire who walks in sunlight, who can go for days without food or drink, and who can sneak up on sleeping Priests. "Stay out of it, then."

Black Hat takes off his hat and bows. "As you wish." Mocking him again.

 

"I won't join you," he says. ( _Never_ , he said on the train, and meant it.)

Black Hat shrugs. There are close to a dozen shallow graves a few miles back.

( _Killing comes easy to you_ , Hicks told him, at Nightshade, and he'd replied _it just comes_. Like breathing comes to most men. Like old friends come out of the darkness.)

 

Two nights later, it's feral vampires, a small pack of them, and this, too, he could have handled by himself - except that this time, Black Hat doesn't ask. He's simply there.

Without Black Hat, Jericho's citizens would still be alive.

Without the man who knows exactly where to be, and where not to be, he might have died ten times over in the war. ( _You fell_ , he told Black Hat, and this is still true. Black Hat is a fallen Priest.)

( _You let go_ , Black Hat told him, and this, too, is still true. He, too, is a fallen Priest.)

"Will you join me?" he asks, before the heat of battle will have faded completely, bringing them both back to who they truly are: a Priest and a vampire. Enemies.

"Will you feed me?" Black Hat asks. "Man needs to eat."

Unthinkable, to willingly offer his throat to a vampire.

Impossible, to pass up on a chance of redemption, however slim.


End file.
